Jeliaboff (“Zachar”) declined a lawyer, taking his defence in his own hands. His legal battles with the presiding judge, his resource, his tact and his eloquence, made him the central figure of the proceedings. He began by challenging the court’s jurisdiction in the case. “This court represents the crown, one of the two parties concerned,” he said, “and I submit that in a contention between the government and the revolutionary party there could be only one judge—the people; the people either by means of a popular vote, or through its rightful representatives in parliament assembled, or, at least, a jury representing public conscience.” Declarations of this kind, Kibalchich’s narrative as to how the blind brutality of the government had transformed peaceful social workers into Terrorists, and the effect of simple, dignified sincerity which marked the conduct of all the prisoners produced such a profound impression, that at the time of the next important political trial scarcely any reports were allowed to be published.
The six regicides were sentenced to death, the execution of Hessia Helfman, who was about to become a mother, being postponed and later commuted. When the parents of Kolotkevich (Purring Cat) asked to be allowed to bring up their son’s child, the request was refused on the ground that it was the child of two regicides and should be brought up under special care. The result of this special care was that the child, like its pardoned mother, soon died.
Sophia and the four condemned men died on the gallows, on a public square. They were taken to their death on two “shame waggons,” dressed in convict clothes, each with a board inscribed with the words “criminal of state” across his or her breast. The procession was accompanied by a force of military large enough to conquer a country like Belgium. Sophia was the first woman executed on Russian soil since 1719.
CHAPTER XXXIV.
THE CZAR TAKES COURAGE.
ALEXANDER III. and his court moved to the long-deserted imperial palace at Gatchina, a village 28 English miles from St. Petersburg. The young Czar and his entourage were in a state of nervous tension. Economically, the country was in the throes of hard times. Districts rich in the potentialities of industry and prosperity were in the grip of famine. Driven by bad crops and extortionate taxes, thousands of village families were abandoning their homes to go begging. Cities were crowded with such mendicants from surrounding villages, and the industrial centres were full of workmen out of employment. Politically, a demoralising feeling of suspense hung over the empire. The masses had seen one Czar—the ward of a vigilant guardian angel—prostrated. The crown’s prestige was shaken, and the Czar’s seeking refuge in a secluded village did anything but retrieve it. The number of lèse majesté cases had suddenly grown so large that by a special imperial ukase these offences were transferred from the publicity of the courts to the obscure depths of “justice by administrative order.” From several places came reports of riots against the police, while the universities manifested their hostility to the throne quite openly. Subscription lists for a monument to the assassinated Czar were torn to pieces and those who circulated them were publicly hissed and insulted. The portents of turbulence were in the air.
Loris-Melikoff submitted to the new Czar the “constitution” of which Alexander II. had approved an hour before his violent death. Alexander III. read it and wrote on the margin of the paper: “Very well conceived”; and two days later, after the project had been carried at a cabinet meeting by a vote of eight against five, the Czar, while conversing with his brother, Grand Duke Vladimir, on the measure to be introduced, said, joyfully: